[FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

Wed Sep 20 16:14:02 EDT 2017

Hi, Barry, Russ, et ceteri. 

According to a Very Wise Scholar (see link <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228580530_Shifting_the_natural_selection_metaphor_to_the_group_level> ), Natural selection is just a co-relation among identifiable traits of organisms such that: 

Whether this is circular or not depends, of course, on what we mean by “better designed”.  If “better designed” means “having more offspring”, then natural selection reduces to an assertion that the offspring of organisms that have more offspring have more offspring”.  This is highly circular, but it is not tautological because it requires that fitness itself be heritable.  

I was confused on this point early in my career and had to be straightened out by a very good Philosopher of Science, who was not a physicist. 

Nick  

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 1:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

I find most of what Hoffman says sort of over generalized from over simplifications.  If we perceived things solely according to their fitness, then how do we perceive things which have multiple fitnesses, where different aspects of fitness vary to different schedules, where combinations of things have different fitnesses than the things met independently, where some things imitate other things, and so on?  Perhaps it works better if we perceive objects by physical properties and then infer their fitness from context?  

Then again, isn't fitness a bit of a magic wand to apply to these discussions?  Yes, the fitness of an organism is sufficient if the organism's descendants survive to reproductive age, but the steps in which this survival rate is traced through all the intermediate stages of causality to explain the exact mode of operation of all perceptual mechanisms, don't his hands get tired waving around like that?

Fitness in this context reminds me of utility in economic arguments.  What is it?  It's what is necessary to make these arguments work.

I did like the conscious agent algebra.  I was not impressed with the discussion of "quantum systems", but that was supplied by the interviewer's introduction.

-- rec --

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 11:58 PM, Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com <mailto:russ.abbott at gmail.com> > wrote:

I'm disappointed. No one bothered to comment on or even notice my post on this subject.  Here it is again.

An easy way to agree with Hoffman and not get bent out of shape is to acknowledge that anything we think involves something being constructed in our heads. That construction is an idea -- or an emotion, or whatever other modes of awareness we have. That seems to me to be tautological: we can think or feel, etc. nothing but our thoughts, feelings, etc. As I said that's a tautology. After all, when we see something and say, that's a dog, we are converting whatever raw signals we encounter into an image and a concept. We aren't talking about the raw signals. It's impossible for us to be aware of the impact of, say, every photon on our retinas. (I'm assuming it is impossible. Perhaps some people can do something like it.) Also, I'm assuming there is a world that includes photons that we encounter. 

So this position doesn't deny a world "out there." At the same time it acknowledges that as living beings we have evolved means to make something more useful to us than awareness of raw signals. After all, why have eyes if all they do is give us the equivalent of a plane of pixels. That doesn't tell us anything about friend/foe, nourishment/poison, etc. If our senses weren't hooked up to internal processes that made something of them besides the raw signals, evolution wouldn't have kept and perfected them. 

So the simple answer is that Hoffman is right that we don't see "the world as it is" but that doesn't mean there isn't a world as it is.

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 8:49 PM Merle Lefkoff <merlelefkoff at gmail.com <mailto:merlelefkoff at gmail.com> > wrote:

 <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-are-philosophers-too/> Physicists Are Philosophers, Too - Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/physicists-are-philosophers-too/

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 6:55 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

M.

M

I am sure they were smart people, but did they know anything about the history and contemporary practice of philosophy, or were they starting from scratch.   I guess I think that it’s almost as preposterous to say that a physicist can do philosophy as to say that a philosopher can do physics.  N

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> ] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2017 6:15 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

Definitely the latter.  They were a big help to me with my "Coexistence" modeling project.

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 3:27 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

M

In what sense philosophers?  They liked to entertain lofty thoughts?  Or, they were systematic thinkers in relation to things beyond the realm of physics?  

N

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> ] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2017 1:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

Nick, the quantum physicists that I worked with during my four years at CNLS were very much also philosophers.  I think it kept them reasonably sane.

On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

Marcus, 

To be honest, I have never seen what philosophy has to do with quantum mechanics.  I agree with you that the idea of a real world outside experience is nonsense but I don’t see how QM gets you there.  Peirce held that all “objective” observation consist of guesses at what we all, the community of inquiry, will agree is real, after much discussion, in the very long run.  So it’s all experience, all the way down, except that “reality” is a sort of future experience.  No dualism allowed. 

Nick   

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> ] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2017 10:40 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality"

"Experiment after experiment has shown—defying common sense—that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers. The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space."

For some reason, many scientists seem to believe that they are independent observers and not part of the physics they measure.   If they can give that up, then things make more sense.

Marcus

  _____  

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > on behalf of Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com <mailto:wimberly3 at gmail.com> >
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2017 7:56:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: [FRIAM] The Atlantic article on "the illusion of reality" 

This resonates with various Framework discussions.  I think it's an area of interest to Nick.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/?utm_source=atlfb

Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918 <tel:(505)%20670-9918> 